


to be human

by clairvoie



Category: Hannibal (TV), Original Work
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Hannibal (TV), M/M, Original Fiction, Other, Poetry, Prose Poem, Read at Your Own Risk, these aren't explicitly in character so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-07 12:43:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12233085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairvoie/pseuds/clairvoie
Summary: "Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us." Richard Siken





	1. circular love

I wanted him to put his hands around my neck, in my hair. I remember the way it had felt before. Here, now, the jukebox glowing up this room like candles in the dark church. Warm, and dancing on the walls. Oh, cascading white from your clothes to the light streaming in. Come on, tell me you need this. Tell me you want what I’ve got, that you can’t live without it. Tell me all the lines you’ve dropped a hundred times, tell me it’ll all be over when it’s over. Walk a shaking body to the fire, feed it false comfort from your fingertips. My cheeks are warm and the golden drink is glittering in the sunshine, oh you don’t know. You don’t know what I would do for you. Rationality, morality, let it all be damned. I’m starving, put something on the stove.

 

You talk about something so much, so often, that it starts to wrap itself in knots. Circular love. You talk about something too much and it can never do anything but get stuck on repeat. The longer you go on. We've been going on for so long. You understand, I know you've heard the singing in the shower when no one is home. 

 

You don’t know. You don’t know what I could do, would do, for him. The backdrop on the wall was yellow and screeching at us, and he spoke french to me like I would understand it. Sometimes I think it may be better that I don’t. I often don’t. 


	2. .

A hazy landscape against the red sky

Green moss, clicking bugs, shadows in the fog, the usual.

You put the shades back down,

the fabric sheared at the edges,

white, and rough with use.

 

I see the scars on your arms,

showing up like spots of paint against browned skin.

 

The summer pushing us out of the bedroom.

The summer cutting our hair off, or tying it back.

I see the crown of your head sink underwater, I smile, I hope you stay there for awhile.

Just to let the fruit grow, else anticipation picking it unripened.

 

Sometimes I think back to the children in the garden,

painted by the flowering,

headstones in the forest,

covered by the overgrowth.

Sometimes I hear them singing in the river, where we would watch them float.

Sometimes all I can hear is the hammer.

 

You’ve come back from the water, don’t step inside, let me grab you cloth.

Hang the leather out to dry against the porch railing,

play me a tune on the strings.

The heat beating down, the water stamping out the flames,

summer never owing us anything.


End file.
